Giuliani, With Eye Toward 2012 Games, to Carry Olympic Flame

As if Rockefeller Center were not already awash in lights, representatives of the 2002 Winter Olympics said yesterday that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani would light the Olympic flame today over the center's skating rink.

The ceremony, part of a 65-day, cross-country relay in which the Olympic torch will be carried to Salt Lake City, extends a pre-Olympic tradition dating back to the Berlin Games of 1936. It has been orchestrated to give the flame a highly visible stopover in New York. Once lighted by the mayor, at about 7:30 tonight, it is to remain in place under the sculpture of Prometheus until Wednesday morning, when the relay wends its way to the site of the Winter Games, which begin in February.

Besides the mayor, celebrities and several people who lost relatives or colleagues in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 are to participate in tonight's ceremony.

''It is meant to reflect a certain symbolism, and bestow honor on the people of New York,'' said Ahmad S. Corbitt, a spokesman for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Mr. Giuliani has made several recent visits to the Rockefeller Center rink. He was joined on Nov. 28 by Laura Bush, the first lady, to light the center's Christmas tree, and was there a week ago with the cast of ''Saturday Night Live.''

On Friday, he thanked Olympic officials for bringing the flame to New York, and made clear that he wanted to draw attention to more than the Games.

''This is a great inspiration to us, and hopefully a push toward everybody in New York uniting to see what we can do about getting the 2012 Olympics here,'' said Mr. Giuliani, who has been leading a campaign to bring the 2012 Games to New York for more than a year.

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It was unclear how Mr. Giuliani would deliver the flame to Rockefeller Center. Organizers said they expected him to run, flame in hand, but a mayoral spokesman, Sid Dinsay, said a foot ailment might slow Mr. Giuliani's pace.

By the time it gets to the mayor, the flame will have passed through the hands of a succession of notable New Yorkers, beginning shortly before 10 a.m., when it arrives in Staten Island from New Jersey.

By 6 p.m., after traveling through Brooklyn and Queens, it is to be placed on an East River ferry and carried to Midtown Manhattan by 15 people who lost loved ones on Sept. 11.

Organizers said the relay would culminate with the torch being passed to Mr. Giuliani from Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees, although Mr. Jeter's participation had not been confirmed last night.

Others scheduled to participate in the Manhattan leg of the relay include Fire Capt. Richard Parenty of Engine Company 54, which lost 15 men; Lyzbeth Glick, whose husband, Jeremy, was killed on United Airlines Flight 93; Walter Turnbull, the founder of the Harlem Boys Choir; Jessica Trant, whose father, Daniel Trant, a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, was killed at the World Trade Center; and Connor Geraghty, whose father, Edward Geraghty, chief of the Fire Department's Ninth Battalion, was killed while responding to the attack.